Talk:Patrician (ancient Rome)

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This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 6 January 2020 and 12 April 2020. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Hannahhelm. Peer reviewers: JamarcusW, History2112.

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Etymology: Latin, not Greek

Somebody has messed up the etymological information in this article with some irrelevant information from Greek. The word patrician comes from Latin, not Greek. Greek is a beautiful and extremely important language, but it is no more relevant to the etymology of patrician than is Swedish, Albanian, Hindi, Persian, or any other Indo-European language.

Although the Greek word for father, πατήρ, looks exactly like the Latin pater when transliterated into the Latin alphabet, that's simply because both words developed from the same Indo-European root, as did the English word father. (I don't know why the editor spelled the Greek word πάτερ instead of πατήρ, unless that's how it's spelled in Modern Greek, which certainly has no relevance at all to this article.) Latin did not develop from Greek, it developed alongside Greek from a common ancestor, and they were separate languages long before the Latin word patricius was formed. I'm going to remove the etymological references to Greek.

I'm not, however, going to remove the Greek transliteration of patricius, πατρίκιος, and its variants, since Greek was the language of the Eastern and Byzantine Empires. But it's important to note that πατρίκιος was derived from patricius, not the other way around. The Latin word patricius came first, then later it passed into Greek as πατρίκιος and later still into English as patrician.--Jim10701 (talk) 08:48, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

Capitalization

Shouldn't Patrician and Plebian be capitalized? They are the proper name of a class of Romans, as opposed to the adjective "patrician" or "plebian".InformationvsInjustice (talk) 21:14, 27 September 2016 (UTC)

While a few people do that, it's never been a widespread practice in English. There are many words referring to different topics in Roman history that are sometimes, but not always capitalized in English. Generally I follow either the normal rules of capitalization or the traditional usage in scholarly sources. Traditional scholarship rarely capitalizes these. It's not really clear that they're proper names any more than "upper class" or "working class" or "aristocracy" or "nobility" or "peers" would be in English. So it might look odd to readers, and risk cluttering up sentences with unnecessary capital letters. P Aculeius (talk) 21:51, 27 September 2016 (UTC)

The function of the Patrician class under the Empire

This is something that has me baffled, & I was hoping this article might offer a clue to the answer.

Under the Principate & the succeeding time of the Early Empire, the Patrician class steadily decreased in numbers, to the point that the only Patrician family I know of that existed at the close of the second century & could trace its lineage to the Republic were the shadowy Cornelii Scipiones Salvidieni Orfiti, whose founding member had been adopted by an otherwise unknown patrician Ser. Cornelius Scipio. Not too surprising, since the benefits of the Patrician class over the rest of the consular senatorial families had been reduced to a negligible level, & that even consular senatorial families struggled to survive beyond two or three generations. However, families that could be seen as suitably ancient -- a measure that grew ever shorter as time passed -- were routinely promoted to Patrician status during the first few centuries of the Empire. For example, the Acilii Glabriones who were a Plebeian clan in Republican times were promoted by the second century to Patrician status. The same is the case with a number of other families, not as well known. Since there was no benefit to Roman society to have Patrician families that I can see -- by Augustus' lifetime, even the sacerdotal duties of the Patricians had been assumed in many cases by Plebeian families -- why did Emperors feel the need to promote individuals to this class. Even as an honorific, it would not appear to be very meaningful. Sadly, this article doesn't even touch on the fact that a number of Emperors (e.g. Claudius, Vespasian, Marcus Aurelius, & others) did replenish the attenuated ranks of the Patrician class with new adlections, let alone attempt an explanation. -- llywrch (talk) 07:04, 4 September 2017 (UTC)

The simple answer is that details about patricians in Imperial times are hard to come by. Most articles about the patricians in classical reference encyclopedias only mention that they were largely irrelevant by the late Republic, or vanishing away, or that Caesar and/or Augustus added one or two families to the patriciate, and that's all they say. So while the information may be out there, it's hard to find, and one would have to scour potential sources for it. But that should be possible, and it bears doing at some point. P Aculeius (talk) 12:42, 4 September 2017 (UTC)

The list of Patricians

Where is this list of names taken from? I ask because two of them -- gen Saccia & gens Volumnia -- I can very little information about them. By this, I mean I can only find one or two individuals each, who are described as plebeians. Does this simply mean there are holes in Wikipedia's coverage? Or is this list simply something thrown together as an example of original research? -- llywrch (talk) 23:12, 4 July 2018 (UTC)

Hardly original research. The included gentes are so described in the DGRBM, one of the only English-language sources that has articles on more than a handful of gentes. However, Siccia should probably read Sicinia, with which the article in the DGRBM says Siccia is frequently confused; several early Sicinii are found as Siccii in some sources. The most likely explanation for the claim that these were originally patrician families is that they were of consular rank during the early years of the Roman Republic, long before the lex Licinia Sextia was carried. In the case of the Volumnii, there's also the fact that the wife of Coriolanus belonged to this gens, and in older scholarship the Marcii are assumed to have been a patrician family that in later times was known exclusively for its plebeian members—both because of Coriolanus, who was part of the early Roman aristocracy, and because the Marcii claimed descent from the kings.

Reading more recent scholarship, particularly Grant and Cornell, I find that the existence of early patrician families that later died out or were known only from obscure or explicitly plebeian members is still accepted as probable, but that many, perhaps most of the consuls with traditionally "plebeian" names prior to the Decemvirate probably were plebeians, who were not legally excluded from the consulate, although they became a rarity from that time down to the Licinian Rogations—although this should be taken with the caution that we can't be certain in individual cases. If and when I manage to revise this article, since I originally wrote much of the text, I intend to provide details on the discussion in these sources (Cornell in particular) and the uncertainty as to the status of certain gentes, and the reasons cited for and against these gentes being patrician.

To put it another way, we have good reasons to recategorize gentes into three groups: those that were definitely patrician, at least in part; those that were definitely plebeian; and those that might have originally been patrician, but were later regarded as plebeian, and for which separate arguments ought to be presented. For example, Cornell argues quite persuasively that the kings themselves were not patricians, and that the gentes that claimed descent from them were not patrician (the Aemilii and Pinarii would be exceptions, although the better known tradition makes the Pinarii predate Numa Pompilius), so that descent from the kings is not a strong argument that a gens was originally patrician (as with the Marcii), although it cannot really be proved one way or the other.

On the other hand, as Broughton points out, tradition universally states that Brutus was a patrician (he was also a member of the Royal family), even though all of the later Junii known to history were plebeians (except for the Junii Silani under the Empire). Broughton also suggests that the Oppii were originally patrician, as there was a Vestal Oppia at a time when all of the Vestals are thought to have been patrician. The Potitii are universally assumed to have been patrician; but we only know a handful of them, none of whom held any significant office. The Lemonii are even more obscure, better known from the tribe bearing their name than the handful known from inscriptions, but since Lemonia was one of the Servian tribes, it seems likely that they were a patrician family that never attained any importance under the Republic. P Aculeius (talk) 05:21, 5 July 2018 (UTC)

Many patrician gentes recorded in the beginning of the Republic rapidly faded into obscurity, even though they continued to exist -- Augustus restored seceral old patrician clans (best example that comes to mind is the Furii Camilli). Although many patricians lost their political status early in Roman history, they retained most priesthoods, which are not well recorded. Moreover, famous patrician families tended to avoid them as some, like the flamines or the rex sacrorum, prevented the holder from doing a political career. So it seems they were filled with lesser patricians, of whom we know little, but they were still there; for example, a patrician Pinarius Natta is known in 363 BC, and then nothing until Cicero mentions another Natta as a young priest (not in the current list on Wiki).

Regarding the plebeian/patrician status of 5th century consuls, I have found in the Cambridge Ancient History vol.7 that Drummond contradicts Cornell (who also contributes in the book) by saying that all the gentes of consular rank were patrician in the 5-4th centuries, and lost their status later. I don't know whether there is a consensus (both views date from the 1980s) on this topic now.T8612 (talk) 10:39, 5 July 2018 (UTC)

I've just read over what Drummond wrote on the question, and I don't see the same thing you did. As I read it, he's saying that there are differing interpretations of the status of these families, some of which are adduced to have been patrician because they held the consulship during the early decades of the Republic; while other authorities hold that they were indeed plebeians, who nonetheless managed to gain access to the consulship at an early period, before the plebeians were fully excluded from it; and still others hold that the distinction between the orders was not fully established before the time of the Decemvirs. Drummond doesn't declare that any of these positions is the clear victor; he merely presents the differing views as an unresolved question, which is what I propose to write on the topic. P Aculeius (talk) 14:48, 5 July 2018 (UTC)

I had noted this passage pp.176-177 where Drummond seems to dismiss Cornell's view: Moreover, the criteria of plebeian status applied to these gentes (that they hold no clearly patrician post after 367 but have homonyms in plebeian offices in the republican period) imply that other early consular families are also plebeian: the Menenii, Curiatii, Sestii/Sextii, Aebutii, Curtii, Lucretii and perhaps Verginii and Sempronii. Since these clans appear in office until the early fourth century, their acceptance as plebeian entails either that there has been large-scale interpolation throughout the fifth century fasti or that there was no period at which the patriciate alone held office (So Palmer 1970[A102]; cf. Cornell 1983[H18], 101ff.). Such radical conclusions are difficult to accept. It is easier to believe that, as with the Papirii in the late Republic, these are all patrician houses which progressively died out or at least declined into obscurity, especially as the sharp decrease in the number of posts available to, or reserved to, patricians after 367 meant reduced opportunities for the lesser families to hold offices that would reveal their patrician status. T8612 (talk) 23:32, 5 July 2018 (UTC)

This work was published in 1989, I believe, while Cornell's The Beginnings of Rome is from 1995, although evidently he had addressed the topic at some earlier point. "cf", however means to compare, so it's not apparent from this quotation that Drummond is saying anything specifically about Cornell's 1983 publication. However, I believe you miss the import of this passage. It's not saying that none of the families occurring in the consular fasti prior to 367 can have been plebeian; rather, it's saying that the fact that some of them don't occur in offices ostensibly reserved for patricians at a later date doesn't prove that they were plebeian. The ones listed in this passage are generally regarded as patrician gentes by most sources, although some scholars could have argued against them. In another passage, however, Drummond lists a number of different individuals whose gentes are generally regarded as plebeian, but who nonetheless had consuls at an early period (mostly prior to the Decemvirate). This is the same list that Cornell describes and discusses at some length in The Beginnings of Rome, where he concludes that most, if not all of those families were probably plebeians (or perhaps more accurately, "non-patricians", as he suggests that the designation of "plebeian" had not yet crystallized at this period).

I don't see substantial disagreement between the two: Drummond seems more equivocal about whether various families can be identified as patrician or plebeian, but both agree that there are a number of arguments for and against them; that the simplest argument for them being patrician is that the consulate was not open to the plebeians before 367 BC, but that this argument is weak due to the presence of a large number of families that are not usually considered patrician in the earlier period, and which are not explicitly called patrician in any source or implied to be by any other evidence. One viable explanation would be that plebeians could gain access to the higher offices of the state in the earliest period, but that after the Decemvirate, this became extremely rare, until by 367 the plebeians were wholly excluded from them. In this case, some of the "plebeian" names in the earlier fasti really were plebeians. I think that both Drummond and Cornell agree that this could be the right explanation, although neither one of them excludes the possibility that some or all of these families could still have been patrician gentes who were later known exclusively by their plebeian members. P Aculeius (talk) 14:23, 6 July 2018 (UTC)

Source list needs a clean-up

There are some errors in the citation templates that ought to be fixed. Ifly6 (talk) 16:52, 2 May 2022 (UTC)

Intermarriage

Is this right? "If a marriage was to occur between a patrician and a plebeian, the children of that marriage would then be given patrician status." My understanding was that the children would take their status from their father? So, e.g., Mark Antony was a plebeian because his father was, even though his mother was a Julia. Is this referring to some earlier system or does the sentence need to be reworded? john k (talk) 17:35, 24 June 2023 (UTC)

No idea where that came from. I would assume that the children of a patrician father and a plebeian mother would be patricians as a result of belonging to their father's gens, but that the reverse would also be true: the children of a plebeian father and a patrician mother would be plebeians. I'm not aware of any authority for this, but it seems consistent with what we know of the patricians; if all children of patricians were themselves patricians, then patricians with plebeian names would have popped up all the time, and the number of patricians would constantly have increased, instead of dwindling over time. I wrote/rewrote this article years ago, but decided to rewrite it again later with more updated sources and analysis, and never got very far in the planning stages. So I don't know where that claim popped up, or whether it was part of my prose that someone else mangled, or if it was an error/confusing passage written long before. P Aculeius (talk) 17:42, 24 June 2023 (UTC)